In Starfield, some players get the message "Failed to create a save game" when saving. There's a nasty glitch behind it that can ruin many hours of progress - here's how to recover your data.
Here's the deal: Starfield is gigantic and only a little over a week old; bugs therefore occur frequently. Not only does Constellation boss Sarah walk around the moon without a spacesuit, but there is also a save glitch that can cost you game progress in the worst case.
So far, the bug with the accompanying message "Failed to create a save game" is apparently limited to the Gamepass version of Starfield. This could be related to the Xbox servers, which for some inexplicable reason have decided to stop saving the game progress. Below you can find out what you can do about the glitch and how to recover your data.
First reboot: Let's say in advance that the ugly message "Failed to create a save game" should not show up anymore after restarting the computer. But wait! Read on first! If you have created saves manually before, they will not be recognized by the game and will not be displayed. However, this does not mean that the data is definitely lost.
The Gamepass version of Starfield has problems: A memory bug causes that the game progress is not saved.
It is especially important that you do not quit Starfield when the mentioned message is displayed on the screen. So keep the game running while you return to the desktop by pressing ALT + Tab or the Windows key. There, navigate in Explorer to the following folder:
The folder under the given path contains the local save files of Starfield. You now need to make a copy of the entire folder and put it in a safe place. After that, browse the copied folder for the second most recent save created by you and copy all the files in it.
You own the Steam version of Starfield? There the saves are located under a different path, if you want to save them.
Now you replace the files of the latest, incorrectly saved game state with the copied data in the cache. Yes, all this while Starfield is still running. The next time you load the latest savegame (it will be displayed thanks to the copy method), it should be correct, representing your current progress.
Until Bethesda fixes the save bug in the Gamepass version of Starfield, overwriting existing saves is strongly discouraged. This way, the save folder will grow quite a bit, but it's the only way to save your save data from being lost at the moment.
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